


I'll come too

by theylooklikeposting



Category: They Look Like People
Genre: Detailed TWs in the notes, Friends to Lovers, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mental Illness, Psychosis, Repression, am i gay quiz, sleepwalking!, this is. one of the longest things ive written ever LOL
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:54:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28062003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theylooklikeposting/pseuds/theylooklikeposting
Summary: After the world doesn't end, Wyatt and Christian have to learn how to live again.
Relationships: Christian/Wyatt
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	I'll come too

**Author's Note:**

> hello everyone welcome to my ted talk  
> this is. literally the longest thing ive written in years i started it as a little cool-down/warm-up for my other project and its taken over LOL anyway. enjoy to the four people who have seen this movie and MacLeod Andrews
> 
> chapter two will be up whenever i finish it lol. also i did not beta read this so please let me know if you see typos lol
> 
> TW/CW: mentions of past suicide attempt/suicidal ideation, mentions of psychosis (non specific), food mentions

After it ends it starts again, like this: with Wyatt waking up on Christian’s bed, light starting to drift in through the window and open door, Christian asleep with an arm slung across Wyatt’s chest and one ankle crossing his. It feels normal to him before he realizes it’s not. And then the previous night starts floating back, like a fever dream--the acid, the tape, the full-body suits. 

Christian shifts in his sleep and Wyatt tenses. Familiar panic blooms in his chest. There is a truth he has been avoiding since he came to New York; that he has feelings for Christian, that maybe he always has. High school feels like a hundred years ago now, but in all the good memories he’s there with Wyatt, with his charismatic smile and his piercing eyes. College was when they started to lose contact, and even though he felt sad about it at the time it felt like the natural progression of things—Christian had his own life to find. Wyatt’s chest ached with the terror of it all. But when Christian woke up he smiled at him and the fear coalesced into a bright, pulsing thing living in Wyatt’s heart.

++++

The first few days pass like dreams. And then, the reality sets in again. Wyatt is not cured, and that Christian needs to find a new job (first) and deal with his own problems (later). Wyatt is trying to do therapy right, but he finds himself repeating the same thing every week: "I know that's true, but I don't believe it." He knows they are not real. But he doesn't believe it.

Wyatt spends a lot of the time he's not in therapy walking through Christian's apartment, sitting in rooms and staring at the floor or the wall or out of windows. He'll move towards the fridge, glance inside, then stare at the sink, expression unchanging. Christian will see him lying on the couch or in his bed and assume he's asleep, only to find him awake, motionless. Sometimes emotions will flit across his face; pain, confusion, a sad amusement or acceptance. It makes Christian wonder what Wyatt was doing while he still had a job. But then, he was hoarding weapons in the basement. And Christian feels guilty for not being there.

++++

A month or so after the incident, Mara helps Christian find a new job. It’s not the same as what he had been doing, but it’s close enough, and his coworkers like him better than they did at his old job. Mara offers to help Wyatt find a job too, even though they work in different fields and he freaked her out the last time they saw each other. She says it's to make up for punching him (which he might have deserved). She’s been kind to him—much kinder than he thinks he deserves, honestly, and much kinder than he expected—and it seems like she and Christian could still work out, but Christian doesn’t ask her out again--at least not that Wyatt can tell. She comes over sometimes, or they’ll get food, but there’s a different feeling between her and Christian, less of the strange desperation on Christian’s part. Wyatt tries not to dwell on it, tries not to feed anything to the growing hope that maybe Christian feels the same way about him. It makes him feel like a teenager again, daydreaming about someone while still trying to hide his feelings. 

But that’s just how life seems to go. As much as it changes it always stays the same.

Wyatt ends up doing odd jobs for people again: housework, painting, gardening, basic landscaping. He walks dogs for some of Christian’s coworkers (they all suggest he uses Rover, but he doesn’t have a smartphone). He does a couple shifts a week unloading shipments for a bodega near the apartment and he gets a day job tending to plants in a nursery a few blocks away. 

Eventually Christian asks what everyone else has been asking after seeing his resume: “Why don’t you try and find a job with your degree?”

They’re both sitting at the table for one in the kitchen eating Chinese takeout. Wyatt puts down his fork, then picks it up again to scavenge for more baby corn in the fried rice. “I don’t--” He paused, thought for a moment, then tried again. “I don’t know if I want a career… right now.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to overstay my welcome, I guess.” Christian opens his mouth, and before he can say anything Wyatt goes on, “and I’m not—well. I don’t know. I don’t really know what to do now.”

“You’re not overstaying, dude. You live here.” Christian says. And then, after seeing Wyatt’s face, “I mean, if you want. You can stay as long as you want. There’s still the extra bedroom.” He takes a bite of chicken, then mumbles between bites “It would be nice to have someone help with rent, too. No pressure though.”

“Yeah, but it’s—I don’t want to intrude.”

“You have a key, dude. You already live here.”

He can’t argue with that. Neither have mentioned the obvious, that despite that extra room Wyatt has been sleeping in Christian’s room the whole time, either on the air mattress or in his bed, that they’ve fallen into a regular routine neither really wants to give up. Still, to put that into words, to negotiate it and name it terrifies both of them—Wyatt because he’s afraid Christian will realize and hate him, Christian because there is a truth in his actions he’s afraid to admit to himself. Despite this, he takes Wyatt’s hand in his own. “Stay. We can figure out everything else tomorrow.”

Wyatt just nods, flushed, not looking at Christian. Christian takes his hand back and focuses on his food again, then starts telling a story about a new client at work. He doesn’t like too much silence between them. 

+++

That night Wyatt chooses the air mattress (Christian doesn’t question it, out of a fear of exposing himself, even though the distance feels like a confirmation he will leave soon), but when Christian wakes up to something falling in the kitchen he’s no longer there. Then something else falls, and a chair moves, and finally after a moment all he hears is a steady thumping and the front door knob turning, over and over again. 

His (new) phone reads 4:18 A.M., and the light coming in through the window is only the yellow street lights. His phone flashlight helps, but casts the bright and unforgiving light of a first-person horror movie—which is almost funny, at this point, after all he’s been through in the past month. Still, as he pads on the sides of his feet through the hallway, past the bathroom, to the kitchen where a bag of coffee has been spilled on the floor and the table is askew, he finds himself terrified. And still, through all of this, the thumping and turning of the knob continue. There’s a shuffling, too, and the rhythm of it all is just inconsistent enough to make him think that maybe a raccoon broke in somehow and is trying to break the door down. 

When he finally turns the corner, it’s just— “Wyatt?” He whispers it, but he doesn’t know why. The sound is, evidently, Wyatt attempting to open the front door while the deadbolt is still in place, and bumping his forehead against it, trying to get through. He doesn’t stop when Christian calls his name. He doesn’t seem to notice at all. A chill runs through his body. This is a different kind of terrifying, to see someone you know not being themselves—especially after all they’ve gone through together. And so he does the only thing he knows to do--he reaches out and touches Wyatt's arm.

Wyatt turns toward him, eyes opening as if he'd only been blinking. He takes a moment to look around the room before settling back on Christian. He looks scared. "Christian?"

Christian moves his hand--until then frozen near Wyatt's elbow--to hold Wyatt's own. He gives it a firm squeeze. "Let's go back to bed." 

Wyatt nods, still dazed, and follows Christian back into the bedroom, making sure not to walk through the coffee grounds. Christian can clean it in the morning (which now is only a few hours away). This time Wyatt climbs onto the mattress, curling his body close, but not touching Christian's, Wyatt's nose just barely brushing the back of his head. He's back to sleep in minutes, while Christian lays awake replaying the image of Wyatt in the dark, trying to make a meaning out of it all. 

+++

Christian wakes up before Wyatt. This is their routine, now: Christian still works in the mornings, Wyatt in the afternoons. On their days off Christian can usually make it to the gym and back before Wyatt is awake. Unless he's hungover, Christian is a light sleeper, while Wyatt oscillates between being dead asleep and not being able to sleep more than a few hours a night. But today he's sound asleep, luckily, and he stays asleep through Christian climbing over him and tip-toeing out of the room. 

The kitchen only looks marginally worse in the daylight. He debates scooping up the grounds from the floor and reusing them for longer than he'd like to admit before deciding to throw them away, realizing he can't remember the last time he swept or mopped in there. And so that's what he does: brews what's left in the bag, and sets about to clean his kitchen. Because it's mindless, in a way, and physical, and he doesn't want to be stuck in his head today. It would be a lie to say he was doing well before Wyatt came back--an enormous lie, really-- and though it helped to have someone around he was still facing the same problems as before. He could wake up early and work out and finish projects at work every week, but laying in bed or standing in the shower or on the subway the lingering truth would always return to him: that he was a failure, a bad friend, a bad lover. That his failed suicide attempt was the punchline to the joke of his life, and that the universe and everyone else was laughing at him behind his back.

In the kitchen he scrubbed the table (which was dirtier than he'd like to admit) and imagined the grime and dust as his mind, and the paper towels and windex as, well, paper towels and windex, and visualized himself wiping the thoughts away, and emerging with a clean and healthy brain. He closed his eyes. He did the breathing exercises the therapist had taught him. And when he opened his eyes, Wyatt was standing in the doorway, staring at him. 

"Morning." He looked around the now rearranged kitchen. "Cleaning?"

"Cleaning." Christian repeated. He looked around too, he felt stupid. But the kitchen looked cleaner, at the least. 

"Um," Wyatt began to pour himself some coffee, facing away from him. "I went to sleep on the air mattress, and I woke up in your bed." He handed Christian a cup for himself. . "So... sorry." 

"Oh. You were--" how to word it? That he wasn't himself last night? "I think you were sleepwalking. You don't remember?"

Wyatt gave him a blank stare, like he was looking through him and not at him. He furrowed his brow, then looked into his cup. Fear passed across his face, and he looked back up, not making eye contact. "No, I guess I don't." 

Christian was becoming acquainted with these shades of discomfort Wyatt would pass through; fear, sadness, anger, guilt. It made something  burgeon within him, some cold-hot flare in his chest he couldn’t name that would sneak to the back of his throat. In these moments he would think  _ I love him, _ only to later rationalize,  _ as a friend _ .

+++

That night Wyatt slept in the bed, closest to the wall ("so I'll feel if you get up," Christian had reasoned, and he hadn't argued). He fell asleep quickly, tired from the night before, and fell into a deep sleep. Christian was still anxious, and so he laid on his back, wyatt's even-breathing body heavy next to him offering only minimal comfort. The ambient noise of NYC played outside his window: an occasional car, a few people yelling, laughing, talking in the distance, a bus making its last stops. The light coming in through the window cast yellow strips across the room, everything else a blue-tinged greyscale. Unthinkingly Christian rolled towards Wyatt, hesitating for a moment, listening to his even breathing, before wrapping an arm around his waist. Wyatt didn’t wake up, just shifted a little and continued sleeping. Christian let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. His heart was racing. He knew why, but now--in this position-- he would not name it. He couldn’t ruin the moment for himself. And finally, thighs pressed against the back of Wyatt’s and arm tucked around his ribs, he fell asleep. 

By the morning they had shifted, and Wyatt woke moments before Christian (the first anomaly) with Christian’s head on his shoulder and an arm across his chest (the second, lesser anomaly). Christian rubbed his face closer into Wyatt’s shoulder before opening his eyes, blinking a few times, and realizing where he was. “Oh,” he croaked, then swallowed “sorry-”

“No, it’s okay-” Wyatt remained still.

“I didn’t realize-” Christian sat up, wiped his mouth, turned away. Stood up quickly, grabbing some clothes and a bag off the floor while he mumbled “Sorry. I’m gonna head to the gym, I think. Sorry.” He shut the door behind him.

Wyatt was still in the bed, still barely awake. He rested his head back on the pillow, staring at the ceiling, listening to Christian put around in the bathroom before he left, and the apartment was quiet again. “Fuck.” He took a deep breath, counting it out like his therapist taught him. Then, again, “fuck.”

He glanced at his phone. He had work in an hour.

+++

Christian stared at the incognito page open on his computer. Wyatt was working, he wasn’t supposed to be back for a few hours. The front door was locked, and the door to his bedroom was locked. He had managed to type out “Am I Gay Quiz” into the search bar, but his finger had hovered over the “enter” key for a minute now. He felt like he was looking up something much more explicit than he really was, like as soon he hit enter all his email contacts would get a letter alerting them of his search history. Still, he hit enter. And then he clicked on the first link that appeared, holding his breath while the page loaded--a bright, ad-ridden and badly designed (in his professional opinion) page with a box in the middle. The first question read: 

Why are you taking this test?

  1. Sometimes I have the feeling to be homosexual and i want to know if it is true!
  2. Sometimes I like women, sometimes I like men, so what am I?
  3. I am a heterosexual, but I am bored ;-)
  4. I love everyone regardless of their sex.
  5. Don’t know



Christian clicked E, then ‘next question’.

\---

Question 10/20: Do you think you could come out as gay or bisexual?

  1. Yes
  2. Maybe
  3. I feel too insecure
  4. I don’t know
  5. I AM STRAIGHT!



Christian read the question, then read it again. His first instinct was D, but his eyes kept falling back on C. He clicked it and clicked forward before he could change his mind.

\---

Question 14/20: Which do you prefer?

  1. Anal
  2. Hand Job
  3. None
  4. Kissing is as far as I plan to go at this moment in time
  5. The simple banana into the donut 



Christian laughed uncomfortably, glanced behind him, and answered D.

\---

Question 17/20: Your friend of same sex hugs you and then looks into your eyes. Do you?

  1. Kiss him
  2. *Freezes… awkward silence* then kiss him
  3. Stare at him in disgust
  4. Stare into his eyes and ask if he is gay
  5. Say, “What are you doing?” then back away nervously



Christian stared at the screen and wondered, for the first time, if this test was a joke. Nevertheless, he hit E, and clicked to go forward.

\---

The result was: bisexual. At least, according to the webpage. Christian didn’t bother skimming over the blurb before closing the page, clearing his history, and closing his laptop. 


End file.
